The Sydney Morning Herald engagement report
@smh - 878K followers on X
Measured over 80 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 29, 2026.
Engagement
A typical post picks up 6 interactions against 878K followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 80 original posts, its engagement rate beats 9% of 3,882 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 7.6K times each, and 0.079% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.864% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 2.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 33% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 80 posts sampled, 10% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 133 interactions, about 22x its own typical post.
Measured over 80 original posts from a 30-day window, last computed on August 29, 2026.
Compared with accounts its own size
The Sydney Morning Herald's engagement rate beats 9% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,882 accounts, accounts of similar size (decile 9 of 10)). A percentile is spread evenly by construction, so 50 really is the middle of that group and 90 really is its top tenth.
On engagement per impression rather than per follower it beats 5% of the same group. When those two numbers disagree, the gap is about how far its posts travel rather than how people react to them.
Where this sits in the catalog
At 0.001%, The Sydney Morning Herald sits below the 10th percentile of the 37,582 accounts in this comparison. That places it in the bottom 25% band, which runs below 0.012%.
Show the percentile table
| Percentile | Engagement rate |
|---|---|
| 10th percentile | 0.002% |
| 25th percentile | 0.012% |
| 50th percentile | 0.081% |
| 75th percentile | 0.439% |
| 90th percentile | 2.10% |
| 99th percentile | 158.1% |
This ruler is the whole measured catalog, not a size-matched group: it shows where the raw rate falls across every account we can measure, all of which are large. For a like-for-like comparison, read the size-band percentile above instead. See how the bands are built
Posting timing
This account posts most often around 20:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day of the week. The bars below are the catalog-wide pattern, with this account's own busiest slot marked. They do not show how this account performs at each hour: we keep one aggregate per account, not one per hour, so that measurement does not exist in our data.
Show engagement by hour posted, utc as a table
| Hour (UTC) | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 UTC | -1% | 52K |
| 01:00 UTC | -2% | 53K |
| 02:00 UTC | -3% | 51K |
| 03:00 UTC | -4% | 55K |
| 04:00 UTC | -6% | 44K |
| 05:00 UTC | -4% | 43K |
| 06:00 UTC | -4% | 50K |
| 07:00 UTC | -5% | 54K |
| 08:00 UTC | -4% | 62K |
| 09:00 UTC | -3% | 72K |
| 10:00 UTC | -2% | 74K |
| 11:00 UTC | -3% | 81K |
| 12:00 UTC | -2% | 89K |
| 13:00 UTC | -2% | 98K |
| 14:00 UTC | -4% | 101K |
| 15:00 UTC | -2% | 104K |
| 16:00 UTC | -3% | 102K |
| 17:00 UTC | -3% | 94K |
| 18:00 UTC | -1% | 88K |
| 19:00 UTC | -2% | 83K |
| 20:00 UTC | -1% | 77K |
| 21:00 UTC | -1% | 68K |
| 22:00 UTC | -2% | 59K |
| 23:00 UTC | -2% | 53K |
Show engagement by day of week as a table
| Day | Vs author median | Posts |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | +5% | 237K |
| Monday | 0% | 300K |
| Tuesday | -3% | 299K |
| Wednesday | -1% | 256K |
| Thursday | -1% | 249K |
| Friday | -3% | 258K |
| Saturday | +3% | 232K |
Best tweets
- Aug 27, 202622x their median
Five days later, Hanson still struggles to articulate migration policy https://t.co/i2mFaHzsnI
- Aug 28, 202617x their median
The defining image of the flooding disaster thus far is that of an elderly woman covered in sludge as she is carried to safety by a younger man. The woman has been identified by British newspaper The Times as Gunakeshari Bohara, a 94-year-old and sole survivor from a government-run care home destroyed by mud and water in Nepal’s Rasuwa district. https://t.co/jo8pwKFOvG
- Aug 25, 202617x their median
Call for MH17-style international probe into Zomi Frankcom killing https://t.co/Vo77UPzZOA
- Aug 20, 20269.8x their median
Exclusive Brethren secretly paid far-right activists to perform stunts disrupting the federal election https://t.co/9tDMZcjM5e
- Aug 21, 20268.0x their median
Catholic Schools NSW has sacked Dallas McInerney as its chief executive after his appearance in the witness box at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. McInerney, who has led the organisation for nearly a decade, was informed of the decision on Friday morning and staff were told about it shortly after 10.30am. https://t.co/RAtTl6enLJ
- Aug 19, 20265.8x their median
Five Sydney footballers – Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, Riley Bice and James Jordon – have been suspended by their club for the rest of the season. https://t.co/0717rACs5G
- Aug 20, 20265.7x their median
An ex-AFL player and a mystery man were partying with five Sydney Swans players in a hotel room where drugs were present before an alleged sexual assault occurred. A source familiar with the police investigation, but not authorised to speak publicly, confirmed drugs were involved in the early morning incident. However, it is not suggested the Swans teammates were responsible for the drugs being there or that they took them. https://t.co/eLMtMLxDAq
- Aug 20, 20265.5x their median
Missing Sydney bushwalker found dead in NSW bushland https://t.co/fAT4IJzN0u
- Aug 27, 20264.8x their median
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she could not yet provide an update on the Australians missing in Nepal, as the government urgently sought more information on their wellbeing and whereabouts. Wong said “at least” 34 Australians were unaccounted for. https://t.co/kCAONzl2iM https://t.co/iUcMWrnV0W
- Aug 26, 20264.3x their median
Scientists are developing cyborg paramedic cockroaches designed to find people trapped in places human rescuers can’t reach, with the latest recruits capable of delivering medicine by firing syringes from a harpoon system on their backs. https://t.co/eUGB2VQiqD https://t.co/JurtnzEai5
Ranked by total interactions across everything we have tracked for this account, which is a longer history than the 30-day window the rates above use. The multiple compares each post to this account's own median.
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Reading these numbers
A typical post picks up 6 interactions against 878K followers, an engagement rate of 0.001%. Measured over 80 original posts, its engagement rate beats 9% of 3,882 tracked accounts of a similar size. That is a reason to look at how the audience behaves - reply depth, saves, whether the followers are recent - rather than a conclusion about it on its own. Posts are seen about 7.6K times each, and 0.079% of those impressions turn into an interaction. That is about 0.864% of the follower count, which is the gap between an audience on paper and an audience in a timeline. Posting runs at about 2.7 posts a day over the last 30 days, though only 33% of days saw any activity at all. Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Thursday is the busiest day of the week. Of the 80 posts sampled, 10% carry an image or video and 100% link out. The account's strongest tracked post pulled 133 interactions, about 22x its own typical post.
- What is The Sydney Morning Herald's engagement rate on X?
- The Sydney Morning Herald (@smh) has an engagement rate of 0.001%, based on the median interactions across 80 original posts from the last 30 days against 878,452 followers. Replies, reposts and quote-posts of other people are excluded from that sample.
- Is that a good engagement rate?
- At 0.001%, The Sydney Morning Herald sits below the 10th percentile of the 37,582 accounts in this comparison. Those comparison accounts are all large ones, because our scanning cadence is weighted towards big accounts, so this is a ranking among peers of similar scale rather than a ranking across X.
- Does @smh have real engagement?
- Its engagement rate beats 9% of the tracked X accounts closest to it in follower count (3,882 accounts), which puts it in the bottom 10% for its size group. Ranking inside a size band matters because engagement rate falls as accounts grow, so a raw rate would mostly re-measure the follower count. It is a starting point for a look at follower quality, not a verdict on it.
- When does @smh post?
- Most posts go out around 20:00 UTC, and Thursday is its busiest day, at roughly 2.67 posts per day across the measured window.